on the ability of the DoD to support web and Internet-based applications. Software Development would be hit especially hard for languages such as Perl that are direct outgrowths of the Internet, and would also suffer serious setbacks for development in traditional languages such as C and Ada. Finally, Research would be impacted by a large to very large increase in support costs, and by loss of the unique ability of FOSS to support sharing of research results in the form of executable software. Neither the survey nor the analysis supports the premise that banning or seriously restricting FOSS would benefit DoD security or defensive capabilities. To the contrary, the combination of an ambiguous status and largely ungrounded fears that it cannot be used with other types of software are keeping FOSS from reaching optimal levels of use. MITRE therefore recommends that the DoD take three policy-level actions to help promote optimum DoD use of FOSS: Create a "Generally Recognized As Safe" FOSS list. This list would provide quick official recognition of FOSS applications that are (a) commercially supported, (b) widely used, and (c) have proven track records of security and reliability—e.g., as measured by speed of closures of CERT reports in comparison to closed-source alternatives. Initial applications for consideration would include, but not be limited to, the set of 115 already-used applications identified by the survey in Table 2, plus other widely used tools such as Python () that did not appear in this first set of results. In formulating the list, quick consideration should be given in particular to high value, heavily used infrastructure and development tools such as Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Samba, Apache, Perl, GCC, GNAT, XFree86, OpenSSH, BIND, and sendmail. Develop Generic, Infrastructure, Development, Security, & Research Policies. The DoD should develop generic policies both to promote broader and more effective use of FOSS, and to encourage the use of commercial products that work well with FOSS. A good example of the latter is the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX product, which relies on FOSS (GPL) software to reduce development costs and dramatically increase its power. A second layer of customized policies should be created to deal with major use areas. For Infrastructure and Development, these policies should focus on enabling easier use of GRAS products such as Apache, Linux, and GCC that are already in wide use, but which often suffer from an ambiguous approval